


Endgame

by Trojie



Series: Defeat [4]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark Magic, Elemental Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-05
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mordred has been travelling and preaching his anger and his revenge for years, and here it is, the fruit of his labours to battle against Arthur on the eve of his victory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endgame

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Defeat](http://archiveofourown.org/works/107368) and [Ends and Means](http://archiveofourown.org/works/256863), although reading those is not necessary for comprehension of this. 
> 
> Alpha-read and cheerleaded upon by the wonderful lolafeist <3

They're so close to Albion. 

There's been no real map in Merlin's head about how they're going to get there - he's been following the trails Arthur's found rather than seeking his own. And now, by conquest and by treaty and by alliance, Arthur has the land in his keeping, from the south, where the cliffs stretch up high and grey-white-yellow, full of strange stone creatures trapped in their layers, to the north with its cold tarns and mountains. 

The day that Arthur signs the last piece of parchment, Merlin's head aches savagely. He rids himself of it with willowbark made into a tea, but he can't help but worry, and that means the ache won't leave him. That night, Arthur comes to him flush with his success, full of hope for the future they're building, and full of love and the fierce, possessive want that he is so often prey to. He beds Merlin amongst wolves' pelts and blankets of wool dyed Pendragon red and gold in his great tent, sucks on every finger and every toe, bites and bruises the crests of Merlin's hips and collarbones, spreads him open with the fingers he's had clasped around a sword hilt and a feather quill all day and takes him. 

Merlin loves it when Arthur's like this - when his kingship shines through him and makes him so demanding of tribute and love, so trustworthy that Merlin aches to give him everything, to tithe his very soul to Arthur's cause. 

'Without you,' Arthur breathes into Merlin's skin as he fucks him, 'without you, you do know this could never have happened.' He says it over and over, in so many different ways, and Merlin comes twice, panting his incoherent devotion into the decadence of Arthur's bed, before Arthur spills inside him. 'I love you,' Arthur says with his voice in a choke-hold, on the crest of orgasm. 'I _love you_ -'

And Merlin says it back, of course, but he doesn't like the chill he gets, the premonition he feels brush over him like a nightmare on bats' wings, that this might be the last time they say it.

***

The attack comes at night. Their attackers are hot-blooded and vicious, and clever. While the sky is dark and Merlin sleeps, they sneak past Arthur's lines, killing the men he has on watch with quiet knives. Not with magic. 

No, they save the magic until they are in the centre of Arthur's camp, and then they cut every tent-rope with it, smothering knights and men-at-arms who wake struggling for air and movement. The flash of power so close to him wakes Merlin moments before the ridgepole of Arthur's tent comes down - he freezes it in time, hauls Arthur, insensate and stuck in the same moment, to one side, and then lets it fall with a thud into the space that was between them in the furs and blankets. 

Arthur startles to his senses in Merlin's arms and under a swath of canvas, and when Merlin just gapes at him, he swears. 'It's an attack, Merlin,' he growls, shoving him out of the way when a sword's blade lances through the tent. 'Can't you do something about this?' he demands.

Merlin's senses return to him with the order, and he thrusts the poles back up, holds them in place with a thought while he scrabbles for Arthur's armour. But when they leave the tent, he lets it fall behind them, and doesn't care. This tastes like that premonition again, bitter in the back of his throat.

***

Dawn rises pink over red-brown chaos on the field. Battle has pitched camp with them, and as the light grows Merlin is in the centre of it all, trying to keep the men in Pendragon red from dying before they even sight their enemy. It's hard work. Even though they've trained for sorcery as an ally, most of the men don't understand it. They want to fight the way they've always done, since they were old enough to hold weaponry.

Merlin tries to conjure enough light to reveal the course of the enemy, but they're cloaked by something. It's not 'til full sunlight starts to catch and ring off mail and plate and sword-hilts that their foe becomes visible, and Merlin's heart sinks.

The Druids have always been an unknown quantity in the quest for Albion. Most of them claim to support Arthur's goal, but offer no help. They keep themselves apart, all except for one group.

When Merlin sees the ragged, mudstained cloaks, the intensity and erratic bent of their attacks, the desperation on their faces, he knows that these are Mordred's men. Mordred has been travelling and preaching his anger and his revenge for years, and here it is, the fruit of his labours to battle against Arthur on the eve of his victory. 

This is the endgame. Merlin knows it. 

***

'Do you see _now_?' Mordred calls, laughing through the swirl of wind and the stench of blood that rides it. 'He's your ball and chain, Merlin. I'll free you from him.'

'No!' cries Merlin, but he's over-committed, his power pulled too many ways, to stop Mordred as he starts to chant. Merlin has a shield over the knights, the raging air in his fist - he's sunk into this battle in so many ways, and Mordred, unconnected, disconnected, _free_ , is going to cast harm at Arthur. 

If Merlin lets go of his spells, so many people will die. So many of his friends. So many of Arthur's subjects, the loyal who dream like he does of a free and just Albion united. But if Merlin doesn't let go, then Arthur will die. And then there will be _nothing_. 

Merlin drops his shields, drops his weapons - the whirling dust-funnels, the lightning in the clouds - and amid the screams of dying men he throws everything he has around his king, his lover. 

Too late. 

'Too late,' whispers Mordred, his eyes locked on Merlin's, as his spell, like a dart, finds the edge of Merlin's shield and slips under it. 

Twenty feet from Merlin in the thick of the melee, Arthur falls. 

'You're free,' says Mordred, still in a battle stance as Merlin's world freezes around him, his power slowing everything and everyone while he tries to … to understand, to realise. 'And Albion is free. _Magic_ is free.'

' _No_ ,' Merlin says, and another shove of his will and his power takes Mordred in amongst the others, slowed to a crawl, despite his magic and his hubris and his hatred and bile. Now it's Merlin alone in the red-orange of the setting sun on this battlefield, running between the bodies of friends and foes alike to where Arthur hasn't yet hit the ground. 

Merlin catches him, and the world suddenly reaches its proper speed again; not that Merlin cares. He cares for nothing but the fact that Arthur's eyes are still open and his throat still working, his breath coming quick and short. 

The wound looks no worse than a hundred Arthur has taken before, but Merlin knows Arthur is dying anyway, can feel the working of magic in him even if he can't sense its effects. He lays on hands, slipping in Arthur's reluctantly-given blood, tries to will Mordred's evil from Arthur's flesh, but it doesn't work. It never works. 

'Merlin,' says Arthur breathily. 'Merlin, you can't heal. You know that.'

'I have to try,' Merlin retorts, almost pleading.

Arthur's hand finds his and squeezes weakly. 'Let it go,' he says. 'You warned me. I knew what might happen. You - you will have to raise up Albion without me, old friend.'

'Arthur, no-'

But Arthur's eyes close, the blue disappearing like the sky covered in evening cloud. Merlin scrabbles for his pulse, finds it weak and fluttering but _there_ , and knows he has to do something, that he has but one option.

He swore he would never do this. 

' _Dragon!_ ' he bellows to the bloodied sky. He calls Kilgharrah down with every scrap of his soul straining for it, the Dragonlord's gift that is his birthright thrumming in his veins, and he knows as soon as he hears the thump of wingbeats that Kilgharrah will be angry, will perhaps hate him for calling him to a human battlefield, but that doesn't matter.

The dragon lands in a blast of dust, and almost as his talons touch the ground he starts to say his piece. 

'You swore you would never bother me with your mortal wars,' Kilgharrah says, and it's clear from his tone that if he could have refused Merlin he would have. He is old and lonely and Merlin knows he has treated the dragon abysmally in the past but never for anything less than need. Like he needs him now. 

'This isn't war,' Merlin says, and his voice cracks, because they are in the middle of a battlefield after all, and he has abandoned so many to die for this, for this one life that he isn't even sure can be saved. 'This is _Arthur_ , Kilgharrah, please.' His hands are bloodied with Arthur's life, and he can't - there has to be something that can be done.

Kilgharrah bends his horsey head and peers at the limp form of Arthur in Merlin's arms. He sighs, so hard it ruffles Merlin's hair. 'He is near to death, young warlock,' he says gently in his booming voice. 'And the Druids hold the Cup of Life - without it, you cannot hope to save him.'

'They will give it to me,' says Merlin, knowing he would rout them, knowing that he could take and they would be powerless to stop him. Knowing that Arthur wouldn't want him to do it, and not caring, because that doesn't matter, nothing matters except bringing back the life that's escaping under his fingertips.

'But not in time for Arthur,' Kilgharrah murmurs, and Merlin knows it's the truth. 

'Will you carry us?' he asks, instead of ordering the dragon to help him in his revenge, to bear him to the Druids and help him burn them from the face of the Earth for their part in this.

'Anywhere you wish.'

Merlin can't feel anything. His hands are numb on Arthur's armour, his mind is frozen, his heart is cold. 'Then take us to the Isle of the Blessed,' he says, and lifts Arthur into place on Kilgharrah's neck, clambers up behind him to hold him tight. 

'Avalon cannot save him,' Kilgharrah warns as he crouches for the first up-beat of his wings. 

'But it can keep him safe,' Merlin says. Kilgharrah's response is lost in the noise of flight, but Arthur's pulse still pushes against Merlin's fingertips on his throat, and that's all the counsel Merlin needs. Air flows over them, and Merlin murmurs spells to keep them warm, to keep Arthur steady where he's draped over Kilgharrah's neck, and, always, to heal - maybe this time will be the time one takes, maybe this time will be the time he can pay for all the death he's dealt.

_For a life to be given, a life must be taken,_ said Nimueh long long ago. But apparently the opposite tax is never levied, and it doesn't matter how many lives Merlin takes, he can't give any back. Either the Old Religion's much vaunted balance doesn't apply to him, or it's forsaken him. 

Merlin tries anyway. 

Sooner than he thought possible or dared hope, Kilgharrah starts to drop back towards the ground, gliding with flared wings over the head of the ferryman on the shores of the Lake of Avalon and landing with a crunch on the pebbled beach of the Isle of the Blessed. He crouches, lets Merlin slide off and lift Arthur down. 

'I will wait for you,' says Kilgharrah. 

'Don't bother,' says Merlin. 'I might not be coming back.' He lies Arthur down to strip him of his plate and mail, abandoning the useless metal in a silver and rust-gilt pile on the strand.

Kilgharrah sighs again, and Merlin would have thought the dragon would be pleased to see the back of him. 'This is not your day to die, Merlin.'

'If it's Arthur's day, then it's mine,' Merlin retorts, starting to walk towards the ruined castle that towers over this tiny speck of land.

Kilgharrah calls after him, his voice whipped by the winds as Merlin gets further away, Arthur hoisted over his shoulder. 'There are some places you will never be able to follow him, you know.'

'And who's going to stop me?' Merlin bellows back, morbid bravado colouring his voice, masking how afraid and alone he feels without Arthur's company. 'Wherever he goes, I'll go with him.'

All the reply he gets is the sound of the dragon lying down on the crunching gravel of the beach - a vote for Merlin's return. 

***

'Merlin,' says Freya, stretching out her arms to him. She always looks so beautiful and so sad when Merlin sees her, his Lady of the Lake, and today is no different. Between them, they slide Arthur onto the stone altar that occupies the centre of the courtyard.

He's still breathing. Merlin has to cling to something, and he clings to that.

'You haven't brought the Cup, have you,' says Freya - it isn't a question. She lays a hand on Merlin's shoulder. 'I can't heal him, Merlin.'

'I know,' says Merlin. 'But you can keep him for me until I find the Cup, can't you?' 

'Oh,' she says. 'So that's what - Merlin, it's his time.' There is understanding in her voice that he cannot accept. How can she know what he feels? This is everything he's ever wanted or worked for, the only thing he needs, really _needs_ , fading in front of him. 

'No,' says Merlin. 'No, Freya, I can't - I won't let him go.' His voice starts to crack, and he tries to steel himself against it. 'If you won't help me -'

She squeezes her fingers tight around his shoulder, trying to comfort and reassure him. 'That was never in question,' she says, fixing him with a quiet stare. 'But this isn't good for either of you.'

'I'll get the Cup,' Merlin says in his hardest, coldest voice. 'All I'm asking is that you keep him safe for me until I can bring it here. Please, Freya.'

'The Druids were never at war with you,' she says. 'Mordred is a renegade to them as much as he is to you - what have they done to you that you'll attack them for this?'

Merlin shies like he's been slapped at the idea that he'll attack them, despite the fact that he's been thinking it, despite the fact that he _would_ \- he doesn't want her to think that of him. 'All I have to do is ask them,' he says, and he can't keep the shakes out of his voice, and he hates that. 'I'm their _Emrys_ , they'll give me whatever I ask for.'

'Unless they think you'll do wrong with it,' Freya points out. 'They're Druids, Merlin. They believe in the natural passage of life, the natural ending of it - in balance between life and death. What you're proposing - it'll shatter that.'

Merlin cannot listen to this. Arthur is wasting away as they talk. There's no time -

'Please, keep him safe for me?' he begs, already starting to turn, his legs wanting to run back to Kilgharrah.

'I will,' she swears, a proper oath with power running cold and deep through it like lake-currents. 'Until the end of time, if I have to. But Merlin, promise me one thing.'

The magic of the promise is still flowing, still binding, so Merlin says, 'If I can,' rather than _anything_.

'You've taken so many lives for Arthur's dreams already.' Her voice is deep, as if she's spell-casting with every word. 'If Destiny wants him, it will take him, and you know it. Don't make things worse. Don't kill for this.'

Freya sounds like a true priestess when she says it, like she has strength behind her, roots and anchors beneath her. Merlin's anchor is losing his life on a slab behind her, and he will not cleave to that promise. 'I can't, Freya,' he says, pleading with her to understand. 'He's everything - I can't - I have to do whatever it takes.'

And what it takes first is that he walks away from her. She calls after him, but he doesn't hear, doesn't stop, and just prays that she will keep her promise even if he would not make one to her in return.

***

'You are treating your friends hard,' says Kilgharrah, over the noise of rushing air and his own wings thudding through it, 'You know I would do these things for you if you asked me to, you don't have to command me. The Lady of the Lake is helping you out of her love for you, Merlin. Because of the kind of man she thinks you are.'

'I don't deserve my friends,' Merlin mutters, because Lord knows, that is the truth. For a start, he left most of them on a routed battlefield this morning. He should feel something more than numb about that, about all of this.

Kilgharrah can hear him somehow even over the wind. 'If you keep on the way you are, you won't be that man for much longer.'

'She will keep her promise,' Merlin says. Because she will - no-one could ever call Freya faithless. 'She'll keep Arthur safe.'

Kilgharrah sighs. 'That was not my point, young warlock.'

Merlin doesn't care. It may not have been the dragon's point, but it's all that's important.

***

The Druids are like mist - hard to see, impossible to catch, no substance and yet affecting everything they touch. Merlin knows _where_ to find them, but whether or not they'll let themselves be found is another matter. He trudges through bluebell-filled woods as loudly as he can. If they wish to see him, they will make themselves known. And if they don't, he'll change his tactics. And then they won't have a choice.

It seems they choose to meet him on their own terms. Out of the gloom between the trees a voice says, 'And so, Emrys, you have come one more time for the Cup,' and they materialise around him.

Always, the circle of hooded robes in the forest, the needless drama, the cryptic speeches and warnings, the _stupid_ title that Merlin hates, has always hated. The Druids could have been ruling this land by now if only they had worked together. They could do anything they want - and yet they sit in dank holes, chanting their prophecies, hoarding their treasures until someone stronger takes them -

'Your anger is understandable.' The lead Druid takes down his hood and stands with open, empty palms. 'But we are not conquerors.'

'You aren't anything,' Merlin points out. 'What do you do, except mourn the past and stifle the present?' He's being rude, he's being ungrateful - they've helped him before, and he owes them for their help, but right now they are in his way. He'll make up for his transgressions later, when Arthur is safe.

'The Cup will not help you, you must know that.'

'The Cup will save one who lies dying,' Merlin says. 'Arthur is dying. You Druids want Albion, don't you? A land united, with magic free and justice for all? How will you get it, if not through Arthur? Give me the Cup!' Power stirs in his veins, tells him he could just take what he needs, but he shakes it off.

From the Druid's stance, square shoulders all defensive, that thought has occurred to him also. But even in the face of _Emrys_ he doesn't back down. Merlin wonders if it's fanaticism or bravery. 'It will not save him. There are bigger powers at work here than one man's life, even the life of a king such as Arthur.'

Merlin is angry, shaking - it takes more control to keep his magic within his skin than he has ever had to use before. 'I could kill you -'

'You could. Perhaps you will. But it will not help you.'

' _I will not let him die._ '

And then the Druid smiles. 'And so he will not. But he will not live again, not now. Not until he is needed.' 

'What can I do?' Merlin demands. 'You must know - how can I save him?' There has to be a way. His destiny has been promised to him so many times, that he would always be at Arthur's side - it took him so long to accept that; he can't now accept that he'll lose him. He _can't._

The leading Druid must understand that a little, because his face is sympathetic. Merlin wants to punch him, irrationally. 'He is saved already. The Isle of the Blessed will keep him until he's called.'

_Until the end of time_ , Freya said. But that means he'll stay there - breathing, living, but gone away. Held between living and dead. Merlin wonders if Freya knew this would happen when she promised, and feels betrayed just a little, stinging at the back of his mind. He begged for this. But he didn't know what it would _be_.

'And what will I do?' Merlin asks the Druids, his heart breaking just a little further open. 'What can I do?'

But they're gone. And Merlin has no Cup, and no answers, and no hope left. 

***

Kilgharrah crouches like a statue in the clearing Merlin left him in. 

'I am not a pack-horse, to be left with the nose-bag on while my master has adventures elsewhere,' the old dragon says warningly as Merlin walks up to him. 

'I won't be asking much more of you,' Merlin says. 'Just one more journey, old friend, please.'

'Back to the Isle?' Kilgharrah asks as Merlin hoists himself up onto the dragon's back. 'You should go back to Camelot. You need rest, young warlock. This campaign hasn't ended. If Albion -'

Merlin interrupts. It's rude. He's tired. He doesn't care though he knows he should. 'Not Camelot,' he says. 'Not the Isle either.' He can't face either; Camelot and the knights who form the home garrison, the townsfolk looking for their leader to come riding through the gate victorious, or the Isle of the Blessed and Freya who knows his soul better than he, who would kiss his brow and try to make him accept this.

'Then where?' Kilgharrah asks, irritated. 'Where am I to take you for this one last journey?'

'I need you to take me to Mordred,' Merlin says. 

'Merlin -'

' _To Mordred_ ' Merlin rasps in the dragonlords' tongue, and holds tight. It's one last order to pay for all. After this, Kilgharrah will be free to do as he pleases, and not be at the beck and call of anyone any more. Aithusa, wherever he is that Kilgharrah has spirited him to, will never have to answer to anyone. The dragons will outlive the Dragonlords after all.

For once, Kilgharrah doesn't try to speak as they fly. Maybe he's given up trying to argue. Maybe he realises that for once, Merlin is going to follow some of his long-ago advice.

***

'I knew you would come to me,' Mordred breathes, getting to his feet. He drops the knife he was whetting and walks towards Merlin like a man in a dream. He's still blood-streaked, Merlin notices coldly. And after all, the renegade Druids he leads are still camped on the outskirts of the Camlann battlefield, lest Merlin forget his reasons and their sins. They have been celebrating, carousing. But Mordred is here alone, in a private tent some distance from his men, as if he were expecting some reason to need privacy.

Merlin stands his ground, the presence of Kilgharrah behind him like a shield. 'I've come _for_ you,' he corrects.

Mordred comes closer, close enough to run his impudent hand along the cords of Merlin's neck. His touch makes Merlin's skin crawl, remembering. 'Your wording makes no matter to me,' the Druid says, the heat of his youth, ten years greater than Merlin's, shining through. 'I've defeated your king, and you've come back to me. My conquest, my prize.'

There's madness in his eyes, and hunger enough that Merlin feels a visceral kind of need to flee. Instead, he raises his hand as a warning and a weapon between them. 'You've murdered a great man,' Merlin says, clenching his teeth against the knowledge that he's touching Mordred's chest through his robes, that he could stop his heart now and erase him from the world. But that would mean he died with no knowledge of why, and Merlin fiercely wants him to know that his dream of the world will never come to pass. 

'I've won.'

'You've lost,' says Merlin, and twists his fingers so that Mordred is caught in his hands. 'And you've killed the one man who could have been persuaded to deal with you by the law, you fool.'

'I've killed my worst enemy, my greatest rival,' Mordred exults, pulling himself even closer until Merlin can see the smile in his eyes, taste the tang of mead on his breath. 'And -'

Merlin shoves him back with no more effort than a blink, his magic taking great pleasure in the hard strike of Mordred's body against the ground. 'And now, you have to deal with me,' Merlin says in a low voice, flexing his fingers the way a swordsman might sport with a blade. 'You've wronged me, Mordred. I demand satisfaction from you.'

And there might have been a smirk, a glimmer of innuendo from Mordred there when Merlin says that, but the words are ancient and their meaning clear, and Mordred hasn't held any power over Merlin on the subject of intimacy for years. Merlin will not take anything but Mordred's fear of him. And slowly, Mordred begins to see that. 

He claws his way up to his knees, then to his feet again. 'Do you wish to duel me, Emrys?' he asks. 'One on one? Magic against magic?'

There's an amused rumble from behind Merlin. 'He wishes to kill you,' says Kilgharrah, laughing a little wheezily. 'I sincerely hope you've made your peace with your old gods, little Druid.'

***

Whatever his delusions, Mordred wastes no time in the attack. He launches in with a whirling hail of rocks and earth and water dragged from the ground under Merlin's feet, making him stumble. 

But not making him fall - Kilgharrah is at his back, closer than Merlin had thought, and when Merlin puts out a hand to get his balance it's to find a warm, scaly hide under his palm. He steadies, anchored by the contact. 'Careful,' the dragon rumbles. Grey clouds start to boil overhead.

The winds, trailing along after the storm that Mordred's started, come to Merlin's aid, and fence Mordred in when he tugs at them. It's so easy. He barely has to try, and this is what he's struggled against all these years - how easy it is for him to kill, how easy it is for him to make things, people, _enemies_ not be in his way any more. How easy it would be to be the law, except that he had Arthur to protect and obey.

The twitch in Merlin's fingers, the ache in his bones and the exhaustion in his blood remind him that the waif trapped in the cage of his power, standing in front of him basking in the early, fat drops of rain, took that away from him, and he is all of a sudden distraught, and furious, all of the emotions he should have felt when Arthur was falling away under his hands striking him like hammers at once.

There is nothing for Merlin here any more. No love, no boundaries, no reason.

Mordred, the fool, laughs wildly when he realises he's both caught fast and still alive. 'You can't, can you,' he says, trying to draw up magic that Merlin's cut him off from. 'Even your magic knows you're mine -'

'Shut up,' says Merlin, his eyes burning, his muscles straining from _not killing_. This is the edge of the precipice, this is what Gaius always schooled him against. Gaius was used to having to work for magic. Merlin has always had to work to keep it within his grasp. And the magic isn't the only thing that Merlin has to keep a rein on right now; even as he locks his power in as tight as he can, to hold and not to crush, he realises he's shaking, he's crying, because he always used to have Arthur for this, to lay a hand on his shoulder and remind him _why not_ and now … and now -

'Give in,' Mordred crows. Whatever wellspring of madness has always driven him has broken free like a stream from behind a dam now. 'You followed Arthur, like a good dog, and now you'll follow me. Albion will be ours -'

The storm breaks, the way it did when Merlin was sixteen and the price for Arthur's life was everything Merlin cared for, except it didn't have to be. Because there was no _why not_ then when Arthur lay dying, and now there never will be again.

Lightning strikes.

Merlin drops to his hands and knees in the mud, a broken man. In front of him is the corpse of a boy barely older than he was when he met the love of his life. Behind him is his oldest friend, whose wheezy, reptilian laughter is getting drowned out by the rain. 

The droplets stinging his face are what wakes Merlin, or at least the thing that brings him back to himself - that and the sensation of pressure around his middle. He looks up to a vast expanse of scaled skin, and realises what's happening. He's being carried, like a maiden over a horse, or like a kill.

'How does victory feel?' Kilgarrah asks, flattening his wings and gliding towards where the sky is lightening in colour, away from the storm. 'That one has been some time coming.'

'And I was too late,' Merlin points out. 

Wingbeat after wingbeat, steadily they reach calmer skies. 'I will not tell you to forgive yourself,' Kilgharrah says, at length. 'But even those who can see the future seldom make the right choice.'

'Arthur's as good as dead,' Merlin says. 'We've united Albion for nothing.'

'Really?' Kilgharrah starts to lose height, the Isle of the Blessed looming into their way. 'All the benefits that unity can bring, all the wars that will now stop, the principles of the treaty that Arthur set up, are they for nothing? You and your king had a noble goal, Merlin, and it hasn't stopped because he is no longer there to drive it. You've started something that perhaps will never stop. Will you abandon that?'

He rears up in the air as they come in to land, to take the impact on his hind legs and let Merlin down without crushing him. Taking to his feet again feels odd to Merlin, he wobbles until he can get his balance again, and then starts off up the stony path towards the ruins of the old keep.

'Merlin?' Kilgharrah calls from behind him, and Merlin turns slowly. He's not in a hurry any more, is he. He's here too late and empty-handed. 'Well?' the dragon asks. 'Will you abandon Albion?'

Merlin shrugs, and Kilgharrah sighs. 'Am I to wait for you again?' 

'No,' Merlin says, shaking his head. 'I don't know how long I'll be here, and I don't know what I'll do, but if, or when … no, when, when I leave, I can do it myself. There's a boat.' He crosses back to where Kilgharrah crouches, and touches him gently on the shoulder. 'Thank you,' he says, and means it.

The dragon shrugs as well, muscles rippling under his hide. 'I know what it is to lose your closest friend,' he says. 'If you need my help again, young warlock, you only have to ask for it.'

Merlin watches him leave, all the way up into the sky until he's just a speck in the blue, and all Merlin has to keep him company is a lone cormorant drying its wings, sitting on a loose mound of specked grey - Arthur's abandoned, useless armour. Up on the craggy interior of the island, though …

He never has to know. He can walk away, cross the waters back to the mainland, back to reality. He doesn't have to see the end of his life lying in front of him like that again. 

_He never has to know._

Of course he has to know. 

***

Freya is waiting for him, but she isn't alone. 

Gwaine's haggard, salt in his hair and a tremble in his stance, but he's standing at least. Last time Merlin saw him, he was fighting like a man who expects not to win. Freya has one gentle hand on his shoulders and when he sees Merlin, his eyes widen. 'God, Merlin, what happened to you?' he asks, trying to smile. 

'Where is he?' Merlin asks in return. 

Freya points. Arthur is where they left him, and in the same state - shallow breathing, pale skin. His eyes are closed. 

The rise and fall of Arthur's chest aside, Merlin could convince himself he was looking at a dead body. The fact that he's almost trying is frightening. When Freya and Gwaine join him, they don't say a word. Gwaine reaches out, as if he wants to touch Arthur's shoulder, but he doesn't follow it through. His hand drops away, and he sighs. 

'I killed Mordred,' Merlin says quietly. 'Freya, I'm sorry.'

'You never promised,' she says, leaning into him as if she thinks he needs contact. 

'I should have.'

She looks up at him with a birdlike tilt of her head. 'Would it have helped?' she asks, curiously.

'He deserved it,' says Gwaine, low and fast and almost under his breath. 'Merlin, I would have handed you my sword and held your coat.'

'Arthur wouldn't have wanted it,' Merlin says helplessly. 'Not like that. He wouldn't have wanted me to -' _take the law into my own hands,_ is the phrase he chokes on. 

'And how many times did you tell me that we have to do the things Arthur can't, for his own good?' Gwaine demands. 'Don't bother yourself over that one, Merlin - you did the right thing.' 

Merlin shuts his eyes tight, tries hard to accept that. After a moment, Gwaine puts his hand on Merlin's shoulder, squeezes, and then walks away. Freya turns closer into Merlin's side for a brief moment, and then looks up at him. 'Say goodbye,' she says, sounding older and wiser than ever. 'Leave him here with me - go home with Gwaine. Build Albion up in Arthur's memory. You have to go on, Merlin. You have to go on.' 

Merlin feels sick, in the pit of his stomach. 'I don't know how,' he whispers as she walks away. When he reaches out for Arthur, it's to hold his hand; a simple, forlorn gesture grasping for something from the past. And he's been expecting coldness, expecting this to be the final blow to the fragility of his quiet, the final tap that will shatter his heart. 

But under the pads of Merlin's fingers and the smears of brown-iron blood in the quicks of his nails and the lines of his calluses, Arthur's pulse still beats.

'I don't know how,' he confesses, his voice tearing like dry paper in his throat. 'I don't know how to go on without you. I don't know what you wanted for us from here, where you were steering us, but -' 

\- and as Merlin watches, he sees the breath rising shallow but steady, pushing against Arthur's ribs, and if he persuades himself, if he _hopes_ hard enough, he thinks he might have seen Arthur's eyelids flutter, his eyelashes tremble in a dark sweep against his pale skin. 

'- but I think - I think I can try.'

And he will. Try and try, until the end of time brings Arthur back to him. Because that's what Destiny means. 


End file.
